


He's a good time cowboy Casanova

by glitter_bitch



Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: Alex has no power here, Awkward Flirting, Bars and Pubs, Blood, Blood and Gore, Body Horror, Books, Cannibalism, Canon Compliant?, Country & Western, Cowboys & Cowgirls, Cows, Gore, Happy Ending, Implied Sexual Content, Kissing, M/M, Monsterfucker Gerard Keay, Sexual Tension, Small Towns, Smoking, Swearing, Taxidermy, Teeth, The Flesh - Freeform, Vomiting, Wild West, bar hookups, in the sense that there's nothing in canon that says this DIDN'T happen, mechanical bulls, small town queers who listen to country to cope club, this fic is meant to reach an audience of me
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-12
Updated: 2020-04-16
Packaged: 2021-03-01 19:55:58
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 3
Words: 4,989
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23612647
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/glitter_bitch/pseuds/glitter_bitch
Summary: Gerry’s in America, hunting down another Leitner. He doesn’t want to be in America, and certainly not in the middle of nowhere where absolutely anything could happen, and no one would be any wiser.The handsome stranger in the corner of the bar puts the circumstances in a slightly more appealing light.
Relationships: Gerard Keay/Michael
Comments: 41
Kudos: 110





	1. It don’t take a genius to spot a goat in a flock of sheep

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If you’re expecting this to be anything like my last Gerry/Michael fic, I hope you’re ready to be severely disappointed. Yee haw!

Gerry surveyed the neon beer signs flashing in the windows of the dive bar and grimaced. The most egregious one hung over the door, declaring “SALOON” in enormous red and blue letters next to a giant pistol that was probably supposed to look like it had just been fired. It was hard to tell- the tubing was busted. Tinny fiddles and guitars blasted on worn outdoor speakers. Gerry hated America.

Gertrude had contacted him with the information last week. A Leitner, she had said, a collection of cowboy poetry of all things. She’d only picked up on it a few days earlier herself, but had been unable to stop it from shipping, and the thing had managed to make its way all the way out here, to Middle-of-Nowhere, Wyoming. Or Colorado. Utah, maybe? One of the square states. He’d never been able to keep them straight, and Gertrude had arranged the flight and travel accommodations (reimbursement really was the least she and the Institute could do considering how often they used his services), so he didn’t know exactly where he was. Usually this would have worried him, but he knew his way back to the airport and the cell service was acceptable. Besides if whatever dark god was working through this book decided to make him lost, knowing where he’d been before wouldn’t have helped much anyway.

So, here he was. Chasing down another spooky book because, as Gertrude had said, America was “a little out of her jurisdiction.” Which just meant he got a call asking for a little extra-Institutional help so she had plausible deniability. Not that she didn’t call him for the local ones. He was the expert in all things Leitner, so she used him liberally in wrangling and destroying the volumes. He would have found this less annoying if she were willing to provide him any information about the man himself, but Gertrude being Gertrude, she wasn’t. That woman could hide secrets from God.

The signs buzzed as they flicked different colors, casting strange shadows on the dirt underfoot. Gerry wracked his brains one final time trying to think of a single other place to start his investigation, but it was late, and this was a podunk farm town. There was an empty convenience store down the street, but other than that, everything was closed. 

Based on the sound coming through the thick wooden doors (which almost  _ certainly _ had sticky handles), the time didn’t mean a whole lot to this establishment. It sounded like the whole town was inside. If something bad was going to happen tonight, it was going to happen here. Which meant that if he was going to find the damn thing, he was going to have to go inside.

He briefly thought about going back to his shitty motel room to sleep and getting a fresh start in the morning, but the time zones were all off, and while it was well into the night here, his brain was still operating as if it were early morning. He had slept the whole plane ride over too, and he really just felt like getting this one over with. The sooner he could get out of all this empty desert, the better. 

_ It’s like a fucking breeding ground for the vast out here.  _ He thought, flicking the stub of his cigarette into the dirt at his feet and squashing any remaining sparks with the toe of his combat boot.

Gritting his teeth, he pulled the heavy door open, and was immediately hit with the scent of smoke and stale beer. The interior was rustic, to put it nicely. Lots of wood, smoothed down from years of wear-and-tear. A few moth-eaten taxidermiy heads of elk and deer stared down at him from the exposed rafters. A mechanical bull that looked on the verge of collapse was in use in the corner, behind the mostly empty dance floor, the man on it looking more than a little terrified as the small crowd around him cheered. Duct tape held together cracked pleather seats in booths, most of which were filled. It was a Friday night, after all.

A few heads turned and stared as he walked in, but it wasn’t anything he wasn’t used to. His ‘unique fashion sense’ as Gertude called it, got him strange looks in London, there was no way it wasn’t going to bring a little unwanted attention in the rural west.

Peanut shells crunched underfoot as he made his way to one of the few unoccupied booths, and took a seat underneath a poster of a scantily-clad pinup girl in cowboy boots being lassoed by someone out of frame. He pulled the file Gertrude had sent him with out of his bag, and slid it onto the table. The music was louder in here, more distracting, but he’d dealt with worse before. Maybe it was a little more twangy than he was used to, but he would manage.

He’d already looked through the file back at the Institute, but a refresher never hurt. As far as he could tell, the book had something to do with the flesh. Not pretty, and possibly catastrophic here, where there were apparently more cows than people. He pushed the basic description to the side, looking through the stolen copies of receipts Gertrude had managed to extract from some poor online auctioneer who’d had no idea what he’d been handling.

A noise from above him interrupted. He glanced up. There was a young-ish looking waitress there, in blue jeans, and a black t-shirt reading “Smoking Gun Saloon” in white ropy text. A red bandana kept back her permed hair.

“Howdy!” she chirped, in a tone that said she clearly didn’t trust him, but was staying chipper for the sake of customer service. One look back at the rest of the waitstaff muttering behind the bar and Gerry knew she’d drawn the short straw.

The woman looked uncomfortable. “I’m Hannah, and I’m gonna be helpin’ you out tonight. What can I get for you, sugar?” Her voice had the same folksy accent as the singer being pumped too-loudly through the speakers.

“Just a beer,” he finally said.

“You got a brand you want, darlin’?”

He shook his head. “Just whatever’s cheap.”

She smiled at him again, “Comin’ right up.” 

Gerry watched her all but run back behind the bar. He decided he wasn’t a fan of the pet names.

The receipts weren’t super helpful, the shipping address was a local P.O. box, but again, everything was closed, and Gerry didn’t really feel like breaking into a post office tonight. Dealing with law enforcement in foreign countries was a bitch. And if the stereotypes he’d heard about rural Americans were true, there would be more than one person after him with a loaded gun in no time. Too many variables.

Hannah returned, setting down a napkin before putting a tall glass of amber liquid in front of him. Gerry looked at the ring marks covering the rest of the table and wondered how effective the napkins really were as coasters.

“Anything else I can get for you, honey?” she asked, staring a little too long at the papers spread across the table.

“No. Thanks,” Gerry said as he did his best to cover the papers with his arm. No need to drag her into this. The fewer people he had to deal with, the better. He smiled at her, strained, and she got the message, only shooting him one backwards glance on her way to the next table.

The song blasting over the speakers switched, and something with a swinging beat started playing. A few of the drunker patrons stumbled their way to the dance floor and started doing an honest-to-God line dance. Something that required a lot of shouting, grapevining, and lassoing. It was clear that he wasn’t going to get anything out of the file with this amount of noise in the bar, so he stacked the papers up and slid them back into his bag. It was as good a time as any to check the place out for possible threats.

He looked around the establishment, noting the exits in case of emergency, before he started staring down the patrons to see if any of them were overtly suspicious.

He started with the dance floor- the more people, the more likely it was that one of them had the book- but nothing was sticking out to him. Still, Gerry found himself staring at some of the patrons for longer than he would be proud to admit. It wasn’t ideal, but he was really getting a lot of mixed signals here. Sure they were cowboy boots, but he hadn’t seen this many men in heels since… he couldn’t even remember. He knew most of them were probably straight- if not outright homophobic- but that didn’t mean they didn’t look good in their long hair, embroidered shirts, and flashy bolo ties. The casual androgyny was really something.

He pulled his gaze away before he started getting hot in the face, and glanced around the rest of the room, sipping his beer. No one had that look in their eye a Leitner gave you, that dreamy look tinged with malice, but he scanned the room another time just to be sure. There were a few old-timers with grizzled moustaches and steel gray hair at the bar, talking loudly, but indistinctly, a couple or two pressing a little too close to each other in a booth, faces flushed with alcohol, and the bored-looking waitstaff. He peered through the haze, and examined the ring surrounding the mechanical bull, but no one looked suspicious there either. He traced the wall across to the front door, and someone leaning on the jukebox drew his attention.  _ Bingo _ , Gerry thought.

There were more than a few outfits in the joint that Gerry would call ridiculous, but this man was… something else. A massive white cowboy hat covered his face except for a toothy smile, and the ends of his curly blonde hair, which spilled over his shoulders. His pink patterned button down was laced with (Gerry had to take a second look here, but no, he wasn’t seeing things) fringe. The toe of his white cowboy boot tapped to the beat and his hands rested on either side of his truly enormous belt buckle. Gerry almost rolled his eyes at the ensemble. The man dressed like he was playing the hero in a glam western.  _ Like you have any right to judge, _ the voice in his head said _ , out of the two of you, which one of you is getting more attention, hmm? _ He ignored the voice, and glared a little harder at the man. The look wasn’t half bad on him, but it didn’t change the fact that he currently held the title of ‘most likely to start some horrific meat-related incident’ in Gerry’s mind.

The man lifted his head, and caught Gerry’s eye.  _ Oh fuck. _ Not only had the stranger caught him staring, but he had quite obviously been staring a little far south of what could be excused as mere friendly interest. Gerry vaguely wondered if that was the real purpose of the oversized buckle as the embarrassment crawled up his face.The man was still staring back. He smiled a little wider if that was even possible, and started slowly across the bar in his direction. 

_ Shit. Shitshitshit. _

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Fic title and initial concept taken from “Cowboy Casanova” by Carrie Underwood  
> Cowboy wisdom courtesy of legenedsofamerica.com  
> Thanks for reading!
> 
> (Edit): @bog_wizard did some absolutely STUNNING art for this and you should all go look at it and show them some love  
> https://bog--wizart.tumblr.com/post/616694123593924608/not-actually-sure-how-happy-i-am-with-this-but


	2. Never let your yearnin’s’ get ahead of your earnin’s

The seat’s stuffing crinkled as the stranger slid into the booth across from him. He tipped his hat to Gerry before setting it on the table, revealing a set of gleaming green eyes. Not the kind of gleam one got from a typical Leitner, but what exactly was typical about this situation?

“Hello, there,” he said, smiling. Even sitting down, he was tall enough that Gerry had to tilt his head upward to see him properly

Gerry furrowed his brows, “Your accent-”

“Is remarkably similar to your own,” the stranger laughed, a little too loud, a little too long. “Oh it’s not that I can’t do the local one,” he continued in an exaggerated drawl, “it’s just easier to stick to… this one.”

“Oh,” Gerry said lamely as the stranger waved the waitress over with a languid hand.

“A couple of whiskeys, please,” he ordered before she’d had a chance to say anything. He glanced at Gerry, “Neat?”

Gerry grunted, which the stranger took as a yes. “Neat.” 

Hannah nodded, any semblance of saccharinity dropped at having to come back to the table, and left in a hurry.

“The name’s Michael,” the stranger said, holding out a hand to shake, causing the white fringe on his shirt to sway back and forth. Up close Gerry could see that the yoke was embroidered with intricate paisleys and swirls that bled into each other, looking like feathers and eyes and spirals all at the same time. Gerry cautiously took the hand and it felt wrong. Too big and too cold. 

“But enough about me,” the stranger- Michael- said, “tell me about yourself. You certainly don’t seem to belong here,” he looked Gerry up and down, eyes lingering on his leather choker.

“I’m here on business,” Gerry said curtly. He had decided to not trust this stranger, no matter how- he looked a little closer- blue his eyes were.

Michael laughed again and clasped his hands under his chin. “Must be… interesting business, if they sent such an interesting person to take care of it.”

Gerry took another gulp of his beer to give him more time to think of a response. He was saved by the waitress coming by with the two glasses. Michael turned his toothy grin to her as she set them down. “Thank you, dear,” he said. He picked up the glass and drained it in a few swallows.

“You’re not supposed to-” Hannah started to say, before he interrupted her, casually placing the empty glass back on her tray. “Bring over a couple more, won’t you?” She shook her head as she fled once again.

Michael slid the other glass closer to Gerry, and leaned forward expectantly.

Gerry looked down at it before taking another sip of his beer. “I’m not here to get drunk.”

“My apologies,” Michael said, “though if you’re open to advice, there’s not much else to do around here.”

_ Okay _ , Gerry thought,  _ He’s not what I’m looking for. _ As off-putting as this whole interaction had been, people with Leitners rarely took well to ‘no’s. He allowed himself to relax a fraction.

“Yeah, I noticed,” Gerry said, “I’m not planning on being here for long though, so it really doesn’t matter.” 

“Oh?” Michael looked at him with that pretty face, and Gerry cursed himself for letting his thoughts get away from him.  _ Pretty? Really? Focus! _

“With any luck, I’ll be out of here before the end of the week,” he clarified.  _ Fuck Keay, tell him your whole life story why don’t you? _

“Would it have anything to do with that particularly thick file folder you had out earlier?” Michael asked.

“It’s private,” Gerry said.

Hannah returned and set the two additional glasses on the table with a clunk, avoiding eye contact and leaving before they could get a word in. She’d clearly made up her mind about the best way to deal with the two of them. Gerry’s gaze followed her as she went back to the bar, briefly argued with one of the other waitresses, gesturing at the two of them before storming off into a door labelled ‘employees only’. The lull in conversation was starting to get heavy as he scanned the rest of the room, trying to find anything to change the subject to.

Michael noticed. “I’m sorry if I’ve been too… forward, Gerard,” he said. “You’ll have to forgive me- I’m not particularly good at this flirting thing.”

“Oh, is that what this is?” Gerry asked coolly. He almost successfully ignored his stomach’s sudden drop to the floor beneath him.

Michael laughed again. “I had certainly hoped so. You have a… mysterious air about you. I like that in a man.” He winked.

Gerry nervously finished off his beer.

Michael leaned a little farther across the table. “I happen to know of a door that can take us somewhere a little more quiet. If you’re interested, that is.”

Gerry’s palms were sweating, and he wiped them on his pants under the table. He thought about Michael’s proposal. It wouldn’t be his first time… postponing a mission like this. It didn’t seem like he was getting anywhere tonight, and the music was starting to get on his nerves. If everything went horribly wrong, he’d faced worse than Michael, before, and anyway, as unsettling as he was, there was something undeniably attractive about him too.

“Yeah, sure,” he finally said, as he slung his bag over his shoulder.

“Oh, wonderful,” Michael said, and pulled a handful of crumpled bills out of his pocket which he left on the table. “That should more than cover the tab and tip, don’t you think?”

Gerry shrugged. “Lead the way.”

Michael took him to a side door Gerry hadn’t noticed. He wondered how he’d missed it when looking for possible escape routes. The bar had been crowded and noisy, though, and it wouldn’t have been the first time he missed something in his initial scouting of a place. Michael held the door open for him as he walked out, hat doffed.

The night air was cool on Gerry’s skin as they walked around to the back of the establishment. Already, the music was muffled by the wooden walls of the dive bar, and the speakers didn’t reach out around the back, so the buzz of crickets in the scrub bush rang out loud and clear. The few electric lights, surrounded by moths, did little to block the view of the stars overhead. Gerry looked up and understood, for a moment, why someone would live all the way out here instead of in the city.

“Don’t stare up too long, you’ll get dizzy,” Michael laughed before tilting Gerry’s chin to meet him in a kiss.  _ Oh it’s not the stars that are going to make me dizzy tonight, _ Gerry thought. Then instinct took over and he reached up to pull Michael closer, wanting to extend this intoxicating moment.

Michael walked him backwards, slowly, not breaking the kiss for a second, until Gerry could feel the solid weight of the wooden wall behind his back. Gerry grabbed Michael’s hips, and roughly pulled them close up against his own. Michael’s ridiculous belt buckle pushed against his stomach, and he could feel the cool metal through his t-shirt. He tangled his fingers in curly blonde hair.

Michael’s lips were unbelievably soft. He nipped at Gerry’s lower lip, and smiled against him when it elicited a small groan. His hands ran down Gerry’s arms, feeling the muscle through the jacket, and slipped underneath the hem of his shirt. His fingers danced across the small of his back, and Gerry buzzed like the neon signs wherever he touched.

_ This is just like that one dream you had after watching Brokeback Mountain the first time _ , the voice in Gerry’s head said, unhelpfully.

_ Shut up _ , he told it. He moved to start undoing Michael’s shirt, fumbling a little with the small buttons. He’d made it three down before his stomach filled with that familiar dread.

He froze and pushed Michael off of him. He scanned the horizon, searching for any sign of something being wrong. Nothing. No one was out here except for the two of them, which meant-

“Was I going too fast?” Michael asked, his gray eyes worried. “I’m sorry-”

“No I- just… just be quiet.” Inside the bar, the music had stopped. Instead there was a droning, monotone voice blaring out of the speakers.

“Oh, fuck,” Gerry said. Someone was reading the Leitner.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The title seemed appropriately gay
> 
> Thanks for reading!


	3. Don’t worry about bitin’ off more’n you can chew; your mouth is probably a whole lot bigger’n you think

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Finally the part of the fic that earns it its mature rating. Lots of gore/violence coming up, so please check the tags and be warned! Stay safe!

Gerry bolted back around the side of the building. He could hear Michael following closely behind. “Where’s the door?” he yelled back.

“Right here,” Michael said from behind him. Gerry turned around, and there was Michael, holding the door for him once again.  _ How did you miss that? _

But he didn’t have time to dwell on it right now. If he was right, if this one was connected to the flesh, he had precious little time before things got  _ very _ messy. Gerry ran through the door, and glanced wildly around the room, looking for the damage. 

The dance floor was writhing with the most bodies it’d had all night. A closer look though, and he realized that the bargoers’ unnatural movements weren’t dancing. They were trying to eat each other. Apparently, no matter how many fucked-up, gore-filled, horrific things you’d seen, these eldritch bastards always managed to find some fun new way to genuinely shock you.

Luckily he hadn’t been inside for the first of the reading or he might have been mixed into the crowd too. They hadn’t quite hit a frenzy, and there was relatively little blood so far, but past experience told him that could change very soon. He was on a short time-table.

“... takin’ a ride, with sharp teeth designed to break and tear hide,” droned the voice over the speaker system, and Gerry turned to see Hannah standing on the bar, muttering the poem into a microphone she’d obviously just yanked from the stand lying on the ground beneath her.

“Don’t come in,” Gerry yelled back at Michael. “And plug your ears!”

His shouting drew the woman’s attention. Her head swivelled in his direction, and brown hair swung around her shoulders. The bandana was gone and the strands tangled around her face like the mane of a wild animal. She leered down at Gerry with manic eyes.  _ That’s the look of a Leitner, alright _ . Her upper lip curled as her stare bored into him and she turned to a new page without looking.

“Out here where the sand and brush become our home, the bones of old drives begin to roam,” she snarled into the microphone, and Gerry heard a snorting from the other side of the bar. 

He looked over to the mechanical bull as wet, ropy tendrils started to grow out of it. The thick strands twined into muscle fibers over the plastic form, and long, wickedly-sharp horns sprouted from it’s head. Blood spurted out from half-formed arteries, staining the floor and making it wet and slippery. Gerry grimaced, and fought the turning of his stomach. Being sick right now wouldn’t help.

Something dripped down on him from above, and he shot a glance upwards for just long enough to see the same thing happening to the taxidermied animals in the rafters. New, half-finished bodies had grown out of the back of the wooden plaques and the raw muscled forms writhed, trapped between heavy wooden beams. The heads bellowed in pain and confusion.

The bull across the room tore itself out of the ground with a squelch. It turned to face him, and Gerry could see rage in it’s exposed eyes. The animal locked onto him, and launched itself across the bar in his direction, trampling several of the patrons into the ground on it’s way over. The rest of the crowd descended on them.

_ Shit,  _ Gerry thought, as he tucked and rolled into one of the booths. The bull barely missed him, charging past, and slamming itself into the far wall. Gerry looked back to see Michael standing there. “Get out of here!” he yelled. Michael grinned back at him.

There was a tug on his leg. One of the bar’s patrons had crawled his way over, and was trying to drag him onto the dance floor which was now spattered with blood and flecked with bits of errant flesh. Gerry aimed a solid kick at the man’s head, and heard a crunch as his heel connected with his nose. The man didn’t seem to feel any pain, but the impact slowed him long enough that Gerry had time to jerk his leg away and stand up.

The bull shook itself, the disorientation wearing off too quickly for Gerry’s liking. It turned itself around, and lowered it’s horns, charging again. Gerry clambered up on a table, and it thundered past him once more. One of it’s horns clipped the tabletop, though, and the bolts anchoring it were ripped out. Gerry fell to the ground as his footing was yanked out from under him, landing hard on his shoulder.  _ Oh that’s gonna bruise _ , he thought, as he got to his feet.

Still standing on the bar, Hannah turned the page and continued reading, but between the hoard of cannibalistic zombies and the animals screaming in the rafters, the noise in the bar was too much for even the speaker system. Around him, the walls started to turn pink, fleshy, and pulsing. 

Gerry charged the bar before the bull could make another go at him. He leapt over it, tackling Hannah’s legs out from underneath her. They both fell behind the bar, and Gerry could hear the crash of glass as they jostled the cabinet behind them. Bottles of alcohol fell to the floor, in showers of glass shards.

She sunk her teeth into Gerry’s arm, and he could feel the bite through the leather of his jacket. He wrenched his arm back, and a few of her teeth stayed lodged in the sleeve. They fell to the floor, and she snarled at him again. In her open mouth, the lost teeth were already growing back sharper and crueler, and the gums bled where they’d been cut. She lunged towards Gerry, aiming for his throat. Gerry panicked and smacked her in the face with his elbow. She fell backwards. Hooves pounded towards the two of them, and Gerry looked around frantically for the thin, leather-bound volume.

He spotted it in the back corner where the bar met the wall, lying open and soaked through, surrounded by the shattered remains of a bottle of tequila. He dove for it, just as the bull slammed itself into the bar. The wood splintered in its wake and Hannah bore the unfortunate brunt as a few of the sharper bits skewered her. 

Gerry grabbed the book from the blood-slick floor and fumbled his lighter out of his pocket. The wall behind him was starting to ooze something oily and viscous.  _ Please let this work _ , he thought, and flicked the lighter on. 

The book caught almost immediately. Unsurprising, as it  _ had _ just been sitting in a puddle of alcohol. The pages curled and blackened, and the bull slumped to the ground in a rapidly dissolving fleshy puddle. More slowly than Gerry would have liked, the book disintegrated into ash. Around him, the walls gradually solidified back into rough logs, and the skinless animals in the rafters stopped twitching. The patrons- the ones that had survived anyway- came to and stared in horror at the gory scene surrounding them. The sound of retching and gagging filled the air as more than one of them began to vomit.

Gerry stood, pulling a mostly-dry cigarette out of his pocket with shaking hands and lit it up, taking a long drag. He wiped his hands on his shirt, cleaning off most of the viscera, and pulled out his phone, dialing emergency services. He kept the conversation as short as he could.

As he walked out from behind the bar, he saw Michael leaning up against the opposite wall, white hat and boots absolutely spotless.

“Bravo, Gerard,” he said, grinning a little too widely.

“You’re not human,” Gerry said.

“Afraid not. I was wondering how long it would take you to figure  _ that _ out, little Beholder.”

Gerry snorted. “Don’t insult me. I’m not affiliated with the eye. You’re just not subtle.”

“And I suppose you’re going to try and kill me now?” It grinned, and its fingers stretched visibly longer.

Gerry took another drag. “No offense, but I don’t think I’ve got another life-or-death battle in me tonight. Maybe, if things had gone according to plan, and I’d been able to take care of things before they got… like this,” he gestured around the bar. “But I didn’t. Besides, this wasn’t you.”

“And how do you figure that?” Michael asked, cocking its head.

“You don’t feel like the flesh,” Gerry said, crossing the room to it. “You’re something different.”

Michael laughed, and this time it echoed around the room in choking gasps. “You’re not wrong. What tipped you off about my…  _ situation _ , if you don’t mind my asking?”

“Your eyes kept changing.”

“Yes, well, I didn’t know which ones best suited me. Appearance is everything, you know.”

“And I never told you my name.”

“Ah! Then, if I’m not mistaken, you must’ve known  _ very  _ early on.” The implications weren’t lost on either of them.

“So,” Gerry said. He’d decided to ride this high of adrenaline to its end, consequences be damned. “We’re probably out of luck  _ here _ , but I’ve got a motel room if you’re still interested. After a shower of course.”

“You still want to-”

“Yeah.”

“With me?”

Gerry shrugged, “I’ve always had a thing for cowboys. Besides, you’re surprisingly good at kissing. I’d like to find out what else you’re good at.” He raised his eyebrows at Michael, and took another drag.

Michael grinned wider, almost too wide. Gerry didn’t care. “You’re a strange one, Gerard Keay.”

“It’s Gerry, actually.”

Michael placed a hand on the flat wall behind it, and turned a knob that hadn’t been there half a second earlier. It pushed the door open and gestured through. Gerry could hear sirens approaching outside. “After you,” Michael said, and Gerry stepped through the frame and into his motel room.

By the time the paramedics broke through the door, the only remnant of the two of them was a flash of curly blonde hair inexplicably vanishing into a solid wall.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for reading this fic which is, if I’m being honest, 90% shamelessly self-indulgent coping mechanism! It was a ton of fun to write!
> 
> ~~And uh here’s a playlist of aggressively 2000s country songs to go along with it~~
> 
> Cowboy Casanova- Carrie Underwood  
> Lookin’ For a Good Time- Lady Antebellum  
> Be My Baby Tonight- John Michael Montgomery  
> I'm Gonna Getcha Good- Shania Twain  
> Suds in the Bucket- Sara Evans


End file.
